When he was four, Stephen with the red curls and piercing eyes had no concept of risk,
no understanding of consequences. His parents gave him copious amounts of love in an
effort to understand how he could always find another cliff to jump from, but cliffness was
not in Stephen's vocabulary. Bright and
active, he seemed to seek out unmapped territories of the human experience.

We all share a human wiring that makes us related as creatures. And
we all possess a unique set of inner instructions that sets us apart.
Walt Whitman expressed it as, "I too am untranslatable". It is that
effort to translate, to communicate, that accounts for the lure of sites
like Facebook and My Space. Perhaps it also accounts for the
phenomenal success of Twitter in Japan, a society known for its
repression and conformity. In 2008 a Japanese
language version of Twitter became available, and today Twitter
estimates that the Japanese send over eight million tweets a day.
Seminars teach "tricks of the tweet", and a new language of
pseudo-twit is being constantly reinvented. Some have compared
Twitter-speak, also called "mumble", to haiku.

We are transgressing old boundaries and creating new road maps.
Borders of language and culture are being dissolved as we
plunge, like Stephen, into unknown spaces of human interaction.
Our inner diagrams of how the world works were illusory in any event,
and now they are being crushed under an avalanche of new forms.
Pavel Somov, Ph.D., talks about "pattern-
interruption" in the context of architecture. He calls Frank Gehry's
constructions "the Bilbao effect", an "architecture of awakening", and
goes on to say, "Mind thrives on cliches, patterns,
stereotypes and schemas. Mind likes the same reality cereal for
breakfast. So when the mind stumbles upon the unfamiliar, it chokes
up and wakes up."

Another Stephen, Fry the actor and author, writes of Twitter: "The press
dreads Twitter for all kinds of reasons. Celebrities...can cut them out of the loop and speak direct to their fans which is, of course, most humiliating and undermining. But also perhaps the deadwood press loathes Twitter because it is like looking in a time mirror. Twitter is to the public arena what the press itself was 250 years ago - a new and potent force in democracy, a thorn in the side of the established order of things.".

This awakening can create powerful counter-rhythms.
Entrenched ideologies find the new phenomena deeply
disturbing. Leaders fail to speak the language of their populace.
Politicians find their power-bases eroding. Tea-baggers resent the
latte crowd, and shamans find their flocks wandering. From Burquas
to Jihads, methods of control are dictated to the old faithful, and
onerous restrictions imposed on the newly doubtful. Do you think I am
speaking only of the world of Islam? Have you looked hard at the
powers of the Transportation Security Administration in the United
States lately? One misguided soul with an ineffective device in his
underwear means that millions of people now have to be x-rayed
at airports. Of course those images are not stored. Of course they
are not unhealthy. Of course they are anonymous. Of course.

Old regimes topple as their assumptions are invalidated by the new. The
young
reinvent the world as they face the strait-jackets of elder-think. Can
you remember what it felt like to be avid and impatient, to
want to scream at the Model-T minds around you? The future is on a fast-
track and you don't want to miss it. In fact, you want to make it,
shape it, stir it around and see what happens.

Stephen of the laughing eyes and the red curls barely got to taste the
future. He died last week, in his early twenties, of an unintended heroin
overdose. In the end, he found himself "untranslatable", unable to
adapt his troubled wiring to the rhythms around him. On his desk sat the
fuzzy red puppy I had given him when he was born, still
there to remind him that there were others like him in the world.

It
is difficult to relate to the mumbles and jumbles of new technologies.
It is painful to reach out to others whose inner languages resist
translation. But the Stephens, and the techies, and yes the artists of
this world all recognize that difference has its beauties.
Did we fail to translate Stephen's personal haiku? Perhaps we should
quote the Japanese poet Benseki:

"Child of the way,

I leave at last -

a willow on the other shore".

c. Corinne Whitaker 2010

Coda: The swift trajectory of Stephen's life is beautifully
expressed in Benjamin Britten's Serenade for French horn, tenor and strings. The
nocturne movement can be heard here.(Thanks to Natalie for this).